- In tonight's "closer look," the FBI is investigating
prisoner abuse, child neglect and sexual assault at the
Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile detention facilities
north of Wausau.
And conditions there are the crux of a class action lawsuit.
But in a newspaper column this week, Wisconsin Secretary of
Corrections says he's made it his mission to fix the problems
from top to bottom.
Jon Litscher joins us now and thanks very much for doing so.
- Well, thank you.
It's good to be here and it's good to talk about the changes
that we have made at Lincoln Hills, Copper Lakes, because I
believe that some of your opening comments are the result
of the past.
And that's dwelled on, the issues of the past.
And we're excited about making the changes to make this
environment a safe and secure environment and an educational
setting that can be respected by the youth.
- And so you say those are conditions of the past, but,
again, that investigation is ongoing.
But describe for me some of the changes that you have made since
you became secretary.
- Well, first of all, even before I became secretary, I
must say this because I think it's important.
At the agency level, Division Administrator Paquin was
appointed as the new Division Administrator of Juvenile
Corrections, along with the Assistant Division Administrator
Shelby McCulley.
Both of them also took as their mission the complete change, the
reorganization and the review of all policies, procedures and
activities at Lincoln Hills/Copper Lakes.
Management was also changed then at Lincoln Hills/Copper Lakes to
bring in an individual that had a fresh set of eyes and a fresh
philosophy in dealing with youth and dealing with the employee
groups that are there.
But some of the more specific issues that we dealt with is,
first of all, is that we -- we're expanding both the mental
health and the medical health services for the youth that are
there.
I emphasize the mental health because many of these young
people are coming from lives that have had challenges, both
challenges physically and mentally, academically, whatever
area you want to say.
And as a result they need assistance and they need help
and we were committed to giving them that additional assistance.
We completely revised our student complaint process, where
that an individual youth that is at Lincoln Hills/Copper Lakes
can feel confident that if he or she has a complaint against a
staff person or some programmatic issue, that their
complaint, number one, will not be reviewed by line staff, but
by administrative staff directly.
Why that is important?
Because it builds confidence from the youth that there would
be no retaliation for any type of complaint that would be made.
Also, other issues that we have done as far as putting body
cameras on our youth counselors.
Why is that important?
Because it deals with the interaction with the youth
themselves such that there's a record, such that there is a --
not only a verbal record, but a video record of what kind of
exchange that took place in there.
And I could expand, but I'll allow you to ask a question
first.
- Well, I do want to ask this.
The ACLU lawyers say that people were fired and new leadership
came in, like what you've described.
But they say solitary confinement, mechanical
restraints and pepper spray continue to be used?
What is your response to that?
- Well, as part of our entire process there, we are working
very diligently to reduce the use of what I would call
restraints, restrictive housing and, well, pepper spray or OC,
as we call it in the institution.
The fact of the matter is that those are still aspects that we
use because part of the problems of the past has been physical
altercation or integration with these young people.
That assists us in diminishing that.
But what's more important than that is the fact of the
retraining of our youth counselors in the aspects of
positive proper use of force, understanding there's a trauma
that's usually associated with these young people, so training
in trauma-informed care and adolescent brain development and
deescalating techniques and motivational interviewing to
deescalate situations.
These are all training mechanisms we implemented.
Why?
Because we want to reduce the outside uses of what would be
seen as, using your terminology, pepper spray, but it's what we
call O2 spray -- or OC spray, I'm sorry, but also the use of
restrictive housing and restraints.
So I will never say we are going to eliminate those because
in some aspects from a pure safety standpoint, they may be
necessary.
And why may they be necessary?
Because it decreases the need for any kind of a physical
interaction between staff and youth and we think that's
problematic.
So we use other types of aspects to help and assist in behavioral
issues.
- Just briefly in the few seconds left, some people are
calling for these institutions to be shut down altogether.
What's your response to that?
- Well, I think that that would be unwise.
You're never going to stop the need for society saying some
youth need to be removed and put in some type of a situation that
betters them educationally, betters them program-wise and
hopefully betters them as an individual and then return to
their communities to be productive individuals.
- All right. We need to leave it there.
Secretary Litscher, thanks very much.
- Thanks very much.